It is hard to imagine that seahorse is actually an animal that relies on males to produce offspring. Today we will learn about this strange species.
Seahorses belong to the order Scythes, a class of bony fish that are small marine animals less than five to 30 centimeters in length. We all know that in the entire animal kingdom, 99.9% of species complete reproduction through females, but seahorses are a weird thing. They are the only species on earth that do not require females to reproduce. Instead, they reproduce directly in male seahorses. After hatching and expelling from the body, the eggs are still produced by the female seahorse, but the seahorse pups come out of the father's belly. Generally, there is a pouch directly in front or on the side of the abdomen of the male seahorse. In biology, this is called a brood sac. Female seahorses do not have it. It is precisely because of this pouch that the task of reproduction falls to in male seahorses.
Every year from May to August is the courtship season of seahorses. As long as you look right, the female seahorse will lay her eggs into the male seahorse's pouch, where they will be fertilized with the male seahorse's sperm. The eggs formed will also be Hatching occurs in this pouch. After two months of incubation, and his father, , finally met by chance. When hatching, it will contract the pouch violently, and after a while, hundreds of small seahorses will be excreted from the pouch. Depending on the species, seahorses can give birth to anywhere from five to 1,000 pups at a time. The reason why male seahorses give birth to offspring is because the survival rate of seahorse pups is extremely low. If thousands of seahorse calves are born each time, there is only a 5‰ probability of survival.
Therefore, in order to maintain the population, seahorses can only speed up reproduction and put all available eggs in the male's pouch, so that the female can have more time to complete the production before the first batch of eggs are born. There is a next batch of eggs to make up for, rather than wasting time carrying fertilized eggs. Therefore, in order to continue the race, male seahorses can only take over the increasingly dilapidated tasks.
